


The Good Doctor

by guybriefly



Category: Little Shop of Horrors
Genre: AU: Orin Found The Plant, Canon-Typical Violence, Descent into Madness, Gen, Murder, Non-Graphic Violence, Self Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 10:11:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5924545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guybriefly/pseuds/guybriefly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If a bloodsucker met a bloodsucker, wouldn't it be perfect? Orin Scrivello finds the perfect houseplant to spruce up his dingy apartment, and boy, does it fit right in. Then, still woozy from the gas, he catches on to the plant's odd dietary requirements. Hilarity ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good Doctor

**Author's Note:**

> (WARNING for violence and blood. It's not extreme but it's THERE. Just a heads up.)

On the twenty-third day in the month of September, in an early year of a decade not too long before our own...

Well, you know the rest.

Orin Scrivello, DDT. Dentist in high demand. High demand meaning he was the only dentist in town; the others had been scared away by his fang-toothed smile and threatening comments. He delighted in his work, but in very little else – everything else aggravated him, made him want to scream, everything that tried his patience and tried to belittle him.

The rush of the crowds, especially. Their chatter. Their horrid, ugly faces; horrid, ugly children; vile, contemptible humanity. Orin Scrivello hated people. Not in the way a child or teen hates humanity for self-invented prejudices. He despised the world as it was just so terrible, so cowardly, so useless. Nothing met his standards. The pain was not only for his own pleasure – it certainly _was_ for that, but not only that – it was also punishment, retribution; speaking to these apes in a language they’d understand. _Pain._

Coolness, of a Summer quickly turning Autumn, pervaded his jacket, but it was too stuffy to walk with it on, especially in this crowd. He’d stuffed the jacket into his bag and was fighting his way through the people. Normally, he’d send them flying like pigeons on his bike, but it was in the shop. He’d driven it into a tree.

Someone bumped into him, and he stumbled, dropping his bag. The woman was grotesque. Sweating. Sneering. Orin shuddered, snarling, infuriated, his temper coiling inside of him as he tripped again, one foot stuck in a plant pot he’d stumbled into while looking for the right expletives. Everyone – the horrible little woman, the old Chinese man selling strange and exotic cuttings, the passers-by, everyone – they made his stomach churn.

Orin Scrivello hated humanity.

A sudden darkness stole them away, and he was forced to see them no more. He groped in the dark, foot still stuck, grabbed the first thing he could find and limped away.

When the lights came back, his bag was not in his arms. Instead, he was holding a plant he had uprooted, likely stolen from the old man while groping for his coat. Too bad, there was no money in the pockets, only a dollar and ninety five cents. He had five jackets exactly the same as that one.

The plant was not horrendous. It was actually rather cute. The flowers around its thick stem were a deep red; brown roots squirming in the moist dirt; a hard green pod writhing and speckled with blue and crimson rosettes. Had it been any other day – had he fallen out with that dizzy bint Audrey or run into trouble with health inspectors – he’d have left the plant to die of dehydration on the concrete. But today, it’d been tolerable. Squeamish kids, screaming adults, they’d softened him a tad, and he felt charitable, so he took the plant home.

This was his first mistake.

He watered it after work, sneered at it, sometimes yelled at it. Once or twice Audrey remarked at how sweet it was, but how sad it looked, so he named it after her. _Audrey II._ Because she looked a sorry sight, too, especially with the black eye he gave her that night for talking about the orphan kid she worked with almost getting fired. If he wanted to hear mindless droning about some silly shit he didn’t care about, he’d give her a call, and he laughed about his own little remark with the plant; even if it didn’t reply, the banter made Orin feel good, and he’d still be snickering about it as he went to bed.

After a while, it got worrying. He didn’t care if the plant lived or died, but Audrey seemed to. She’d tried to feed it special plant foods from work, turn it at every angle to get the sun on every leaf, every inch of its pod, but the poor thing was wilting slowly. Its pod was dry and beginning to wrinkle, as if it were fighting the current in the river of time and aging too fast; its leaves were crunchy and yellowed like old wallpaper; the red rosettes leopard-spotting its back were turning pale as if exsanguinated.

It might’ve been the gas, but when the plant nipped his finger as he tried to pry its spiny maw open, he didn’t withdraw his hand immediately. He was still woozy. Fuck, he’d inhaled a _lot_ of that stuff. He barely felt a thing, not even a stab of pain through the buzz; it occurred to him that maybe losing his bike to a tree had been a blessing in disguise, he’d have broken his neck driving it as high as he was today.

And it might’ve just been the gas when he felt a slimy tongue lave over his fingertip, drawing the hot blood from the tiny pinprick of a wound until he finally took his hand back.

So it was a carnivorous plant.

The thought tickled him.

‘You like blood, huh?’ Orin tapped the pod, a sneering smile spreading across his face. ‘I’ve got more than enough, little guy, trust me.’

With a whoop, he fell away from the plant, cackling; he fell onto the untidy bed with its floral pattern of daffodil-yellow and poppy seed-brown stains, and was unconscious within seconds, free to drift in the same old dreamless sleep until he woke up kicking and crying for his mama the next day. Orin Scrivello was not an easy sleeper and, by now, the whole building knew it. He’d scream his frustrations to the rafters in the hopes that Satan himself would hear; then Orin’d be able to sell his soul for one damn night of restful sleep.

At work, he contemplated the events of the previous night. What was the likelihood that this plant truly thirsted for blood as he imagined it? It wasn’t impossible that it’d been a fevered mismemory conjured up by his drug-swamped mind. Nevertheless, as he pulled teeth and prodded gums, he prodded a little harder than his patients would like – while tsk-tsk-ing and telling them with lilting sarcasm to floss more often – and collected the dripping blood in a small steel thermos. The continuous tink-tink-tink of droplets falling against the insulated interior forced him to keep talking to mask the noise; that wasn’t a hard task, but he was on edge, his usual relaxed sadism caught on fishhooks.

He had a pet plant, and the plant ate blood, and this wasn’t a usual petty poking of the gums – this was the kind of thing that could get him locked up if he let it go too far.

When he returned home, the thermos tucked under his arm and the air warm enough to walk home without his jacket (like he had a choice!), the plant seemed to have perked up. And _grown._ Holy hell, it’d grown, and Orin needed to look twice, the flask clattering to the floor. The plant was now as big as, well, it was hard to compare. Before, the pod had been about the size of a kitten; now, it was the size of a cat, and had an appetite to match. It slurped the still-warm blood and now Orin saw the tongue that had praised his fingertip the night before. It was pink, sticky with a translucent sap, and it explored every inch of the flask.

Orin immediately felt dizzy. A bloodsucker like him, huh? Who’d have thought it?

The kinship he felt with the plant, although brief and quickly discarded in exhaustion, was overwhelming. Its spiny teeth, its now-frighteningly vivid rosettes. The butcher’s scent mingling with that of... roses? Lilacs? It was impossible to place but impossible to deny. Sweat trickling down his forehead, an impending sense of dread washed over Orin but he ignored it, brushing the gel and sweat from his oily hair before changing into his pyjamas – a slightly dirtier white vest than the one he wore in the daytime – and getting into bed.

‘G’night, Audrey II.’ His voice was thick with sarcasm, with mockery, with false sweetness, and he rolled over to try and sleep.

‘Goodnight, baby,’ crooned a soft voice behind him, but he did not register it; a lavender-sweet scent permeated the filthy air of the apartment and lulled Orin into a long, uninterrupted slumber.

When he awoke, the plant was the size of... he hadn’t seen many dogs, but he assumed it was the size of a young Labrador, and its roots were pressing tightly against the pot he’d nabbed from Mushnik’s place, so he was forced to nip by there again after work as he picked up Audrey. Over the next few weeks this happened more and more often – Orin would show up to pick up Audrey, a flask under his arm, the contents of which he always neglected to describe, and Seymour and the old man would watch as Orin, with Audrey and an ever-larger plant pot, disappeared into the streets.

Speaking of Seymour and Mushnik, they weren’t on great terms, but they also weren’t on terrible terms. Their relationship – which had been volatile, explosive in the past few weeks, due to poverty making apes out of them – had fermented into somewhat of a silent father-son relationship. Seymour had snapped at Mushnik one day, after a volley of abuse left him at the end of his tether, and instead of firing him on the spot, a tired and lonely Mushnik felt an odd sort of respect, as if the boy’d finally learned to stand up for himself.

So, they tolerated each other. Similarly, Audrey tolerated Orin, and she tolerated the way the plant leered at her, even if its seeming grin made her shudder and its growls of digestion gave her a fright. It was no worse than Orin’s shouts and punches, and she’d have picked the plant over Orin any day – carnivorous they both may have been, but only Orin was a predator. The plant was passive. It couldn’t move, it couldn’t think, but Orin was _very_ capable of doing both, in the most insidious and hateful of ways.

Especially since his promotion; his pay rise; his surprising pass at a safety inspection. Especially since his sudden swell of energy, due to better sleep, better attitude, had gained him the favour of other dentists and he’d risen from the Gutter to fancier nightclubs; migrated to a nicer dingy apartment; bought himself a new jacket and got his motorcycle back with a slick new paintjob and an engine that purred like the day he’d bought it. This sudden turn of luck for Orin couldn’t be worse for Audrey – one’d think that Orin’s good luck would have made him kinder, more lenient to Audrey, but it only stroked his ego, fuelled his sadistic desires, and Audrey found herself avoiding him. It didn’t do any good. He always found her.

The plant became hungrier.

Orin’s luck began to turn sour again.

Specifically, the situation was this; Orin was in such a delightful mood that he’d forgotten to fill his thermos with run-off blood. This thermos was new. It was a fitting red, and larger than the old silver one. He’d forgotten to fix a meal for his beloved plant, and this was not the first time, and although he promised the vegetable (as if it could _hear_ him!) that he’d get it some food tomorrow, he had bigger things on his mind.

And that’s when things began to turn bad. One of his young patients’ parents had filed a lawsuit against him, and this one was _rich,_ god only knew why she sent her kid to get her teeth done on Skid Row. The bottom line was, no wheedling out of it. His best client – Wilbur Force, that insufferable masochist – was leaving town, and that’d be a heavy blow to his waiting room. Cries of misconduct were raising, swelling like a wave fit to break.

His motorcycle broke down. His jacket shrunk in the Laundromat. His apartment almost caught _fire._

He was sure everything was fine earlier. He was sure he’d covered his tracks; he’d given the people at the Laundromat precise instructions on how to prevent _exactly this_ from happening; he was sure that the gas canister that almost blew his slightly-less-dingy new home to kingdom come had nothing wrong with it when he first checked.

It was getting on his nerves something chronic, and who should stand in the path of his rage but Audrey. Poor, sweet Audrey, who just happened to have walked into the wrong bar on the wrong night and wound up with the wrongest guy she could’ve met. A life full of wrong turns and she’d fallen right into a whole mess of bloody trouble.

Orin’s fist collided with her jaw.

‘Stupid woman! Stupid, goddamn-!’

His voice was a bark, a roar of wind, drowning out her squealing pleas.

‘I’m sorry, Orin, I’m sorry!’ But there was nothing she could do. She held up her hands in futile defence and Orin’s aching fist sailed across her face with a crack of her nose.

‘ _Doctor!’_ he howled, spit frothing at the corners of his mouth. His smile was an awful tiger’s grin, all teeth and gums and snarling; his eyes were wild. ‘You call me _doctor,_ you little _slut!’_

‘ _Doctor!’_ Audrey screamed, and she took her hand away from her bleeding, crooked nose, only to catch a vicious punch across her temple that sent her spiralling to the floor; a white flower falling from the bough of a tree to the ground to wilt.

Audrey fell down, and did not get up.

A glassy look had settled on her face. Her lips moved, but her body did not. Blood pooled around her head, dampening her golden hair, the tips of her dainty fingers twitching and red.

For a second, Orin though she had died, and did not know what to feel.

From her mouth, there came a soft rattle, like the low groan of a floorboard being depressed.

‘Sey-mour,’ she whimpered, ‘Sey-mour. Sey-mour...’

That was the final straw. The plant wanted a meal? The plant was going to get a meal. Perversion gripped Orin, sickness wrapped around his legs, disgust coiled at his neck like a feather boa or boa constrictor. From the kitchen, he grabbed a knife. A thick, black-handled knife, blade glistening as he drew it from the block; a nefarious Arthur pulling his devil’s sword from its stone.

He pushed the blade into Audrey’s quivering chest, and that was that.

‘Feed me,’ rumbled a voice behind him, and Orin did not jump. He did not even register it until it barked again; ‘Feed me, Scrivello, feed her to me _now!’_

Bewildered, furious, Orin spun around, the knife cutting at the air and his legs swaying as if rivers were crashing at his ankles.

‘You can’t speak,’ he said, clear and angry, pointing the knife, ‘Nuh-uh. You’re a plant!’

The plant paused, and then seemed to grin, catlike.

‘Of course I can’t speak, honey, it’s just the gas. Chop her up and go to sleep and you’ll wake up as good as new.’

Orin stalked around the corpse. Part of him was afraid she’d leap up and grab at him, bestial, all the fury of a she-cat defending her litter. But the body was so still. So silent. The sight of his footprints, bloody on the floor, made his stomach churn in the most wonderful way, but there was something inside of him that believed the plant.

Maybe it was just the gas.

‘Now, baby, do it now.’ The plant cackled gently. ‘The girl’s dead, just like you wanted.’

Orin shook his head. ‘I hated that bitch, but- but I didn’t want this.’

‘So chop the blonde up, put her in me, we’re done for the day!’

The plant’s vines caressed the edge of the pot, and it crooned out a soft chuckle as it watched Orin stalk, lost in a circle, around the body.

‘Come on, _O-_ rin, do it now.’ It sounded impatient, almost petulant, the pitch rising from a growl to a whine as thick tentacle-like vines slapped the side of the pot in anticipation. Orin’s head was spinning. It had to be the gas. It had to be the gas. ‘If they find her now, you know they’re gonna put you away!’

Staggering, Orin passed into the kitchen and fell against the counter. He could still hear the cackling of the plant in his ears, ringing and obnoxious and never stopping, even if he bunched his hands into fists and pressed them against his head, trying to crush his skull in the vice. Sweat pouring from his forehead, he reached out across the counter with a clammy hand. He twisted the knife; the long, black-handled knife, the only one of the set that he hadn’t sold. One by one, indecisive, his fingers curled around the handle.

‘Fine,’ he growled, ‘If you’ll _stop,_ if it shuts your trap, that’s _fine-!_ ’

Drunk on conviction, he stumbled in a gasless stupor to where his lover lay twitching minutely on the floor. Her eyes didn’t watch him. Her mouth still trembled with effort. With a grunt, he thrust the knife down. She gasped. The air turned cold in her mouth. Her breath rattled. Blood bloomed in red roses on the front of her dress. The light disappeared from her eyes, and with a final whimper, she lolled her head and did not move.

The plant purred. Heaving for breath, trying to breathe without letting the scent of hot, raw blood invade his nostrils, Orin glowered up at it, retrieved the knife, and felt his mouth twist into an awful smile.

Orin began to laugh.

He laughed for so long, uncontrollably, laughed as he hacked at the cooling flesh, laughed as he stood on the bones to snap them, laughed as he threw limbs into the beastly vegetable’s gaping mouth, laughed and sobbed and screamed abuse at the only Audrey there was left, flailed his limbs and attacked it with the knife, only for the knife to bend against the thick green pod. He laughed until he fell spent against his bed, soaked in blood, sweat sticking his hair to his face.

For the first time in years, Doctor Scrivello felt absolutely _terrible._ Deplorable. Cruel, sinful, so completely awful that he did not sleep. He kicked helplessly at the blood on the floor, trying to repel it with the force of his disgust alone, and cried until he fell asleep.

Just like that, his luck returned. The charges were dropped, as if by magic, as if by some stroke of god; the parents had suddenly changed their minds, chalking it up to their child’s vivid imagination and hatred of dentists; the bike was fixed with improvements; his jacket had _not_ shrunk in the laundry but the idiot owners of the Laundromat had mixed it up with a smaller customer’s; Wilbur Force was forced to stay when he discovered that there was no disreputable dentist in the new town.

Orin understood completely, and that’s when the disappearances began.

He began to move more and go out less. Whoever saw him would note him as more sickly than usual, his strong face now gaunt and shining with pallor, his cruel eyes wild with panic. In a shaking, excited voice, he’d ask the last client of the day whether they were here alone, what they were doing tonight, and if the answers satisfied him he’d do the one thing he never imagined himself doing. He’d give _them_ a dose of the gas.

When they were stupid, he’d pull his jacket on, carry them out through the back door in a human crutch. Best thing about Skid Row? Nobody asked questions. From the moment they were out of that door, the patient was as good as plant food. Each bloody, awful, evil deed became easier. His sadism swelled with every meal. The plant grew and grew until he was forced, under cover of darkness, to carry it down to the basement of the building, a dusty concrete crypt that nobody visited. No eyebrows were raised when Orin disappeared down there at night. Nobody cared.

Until that night. Until the night when Orin, sitting upright in bed with a fevered mind and a twisting, ecstatic stomach, heard a knock at the door.

Scrambling to answer, nerves full of lightning and aching for something to do, he answered it, throwing it open.

Seymour was here.

Orin managed a sneer, eyes darting. ‘What do you-’

The shorter man, hair dripping with rain, eyes lowered and face dark, stood fast in the doorway.

‘If you want something removed in a hurry,’ he said, soft and scared but _furious,_ ‘It’s best not to dispose of it on Skid Row.’

Orin’s heart jumped. His blood pounded in his veins, a death drum in his ears.

‘I don’t know what you mean, small fry.’ His voice was too high, too tremulous, anyone would be able to see right through him.

In a clenched fist, Seymour thrust a bloody white rag into Orin’s chest.

‘This – Audrey’s dress!’

Deep in the bowels of the building, Orin could hear the plant rumble with laughter.

‘I thought I saw it last week, but I was too scared to ask you about it! And the red stain – well, that could’a been anything, knowing you!’

Suddenly dominant, Seymour stepped forwards. Orin stepped back. The tiny man with his chapel shoes and large glasses was now the terrible vessel that delivered the dentist’s demise.

‘But now Audrey hasn’t come into work in weeks, she’s not answering my calls, nobody can find her- and it begins to look like a- like a murder!’

He advanced. Orin retreated. The knife was in the kitchen. Seymour was slowly backing him against the wall. There was nowhere to run.

‘You’re so nasty to her, and this time she pushed you too far, right?’

For a second he didn’t sound angry. He sounded scared. Orin took the chance.

‘I didn’t do nothin’.’ His eyes danced between Seymour and the door. ‘I’m innocent, Seymour.’

Desperate, Seymour grabbed at Orin’s collar. ‘Then go to the police and tell _them_ that!’

Ashamed, Seymour let go.

‘I don’t think you did it. But it’d let my conscience rest easy. You’re not a nice guy, Orin, but you wouldn’t kill anybody.’ Hesitation crossed his face, blurring him with worry. ‘Right?’

Pausing, tired and scared, Orin nodded, smiling wanly. ‘Right.’

‘So you’ll come with me? To the police station?’

‘Sure, sure. Just let me grab my coat.’

Seymour shuffled anxiously, then pointed at the leather jacket hanging from the bedpost. ‘That one?’

Orin stopped, then thought fast. He had to get rid of this guy; he had his number. ‘Naw, not that one, I’ve been wearing that one all day.’

‘So where’s your other coat?’ An animal terror was in Seymour’s tone. He was afraid, but not frightened; the fear that provokes prey to become predator in self defence.

‘It’s in the basement.’

‘The basement?’

‘Yeah. Come with me, I’ll just be a sec.’

Seymour was dumb, but he wasn’t completely stupid. He stayed behind Orin as they walked down the stairs, down the many, many stairs until they reached the basement. He even stayed outside the door as Orin entered that isolated concrete cell beneath the earth. Only when Orin turned on the light – a paltry, swinging thing that barely illuminated the room – did he take interest in what was inside.

‘That’s quite a plant,’ he gasped, admiring the huge flytrap in the middle of the room, surrounded by nets and cords and abandoned racks of clothes. It writhed in place, seemingly grinning, pleased by the compliment. ‘Is this why you’ve been stealing pots from Mr Mushnik?’

Pacing around him, going for a length of rope on the ground, Orin watched Seymour move closer to the plant in order to inspect it. ‘Sure is.’

Seymour got closer. ‘What does it eat?’

‘Answer me this, Krelbourn, how did you find my address?’

A little startled by the change of subject, Seymour tried to look at Orin in his peripheral vision, but the plant gurgled softly, trying to catch his attention. ‘Audrey told me.’

Orin scoffed, delirious, disgusted. ‘ _Audrey._ How about this.’ He chuckled. He felt awful and it felt _great._ ‘Guess what I called the plant. Go on. _Guess.’_

‘... I don’t know.’

Twisting the rope in his fists, Orin snarled.

_‘Audrey II.’_

The rope was around Seymour’s throat. He was caught off guard and Orin planted a knee in the back of his leg, forcing him to the floor. Seymour grabbed for the throat. Orin tightened it. Bucking, Seymour elbowed Orin in the ribs. Orin had felt ladies hit harder. Barely faltering, he kept strangling. In his desperation, Seymour threw himself into Orin’s momentum and sent them both crashing backwards. It was a fight for the upper hand; Seymour clawing and scratching, Orin throwing clumsy punches. Orin tore a fistful of hair from his prey’s head. Seymour’s glasses were smashed by the heel of Orin’s palm but this did not stop him from biting down hard on Orin’s hand when he tried to smother him. Berserk, perverse, Orin pinned Seymour to the concrete, legs straddling his waist and two hands at his throat.

He felt Seymour’s throat bob, twitch against his strangling hands. Seymour batted helplessly at him, weakening, his mouth open and lips blueing. His eyelids grew heavy. Mouth hanging ajar, eyes half-lidded, he looked almost as if in ecstasy if it weren’t for his blueing cheeks. Slowly, slowly, his struggles grew weaker and weaker until finally he fell limp under Orin’s rigid form.

A nerve-wracking second later and Orin got off of him. His hands released his throat. He was about to assure the plant that it’d get its fix when a fist caught the hard edge of his jaw.

Seymour had been faking it. Orin was dazed. He’d been so _gullible._ The little brat jumped to his feet, grabbed his broken glasses, ran blindly for the door and slammed it behind him.

‘I’m calling the police, Orin! I’m gonna tell them that you killed Audrey and nobody will see y-your ugly mug on Skid Row again!’

Orin roared like a beast caged. He hurled abuse at the door until he knew Seymour was gone. He skulked towards the plant and gave it a kick.

‘See what you got me into?! See this mess?! This is- this is- all your fault, you stupid plant-!’

‘Aw, shut up,’ the flytrap hissed, ‘I’m _hungry,_ doctor.’

‘There goes your meal.’ Orin cackled, defeated and mad. ‘There he goes, to lock me away, and what’ll happen to you?! Nobody to feed you! Hah! _Hah!’_

The plant let out a rumbling sigh. ‘Quit your yappin’, Scrivello. How about I make you a deal?’

It took Orin’s stunned, angry silence as a yes.

‘Give me a little something to tide me over for now, and I’ll take care of _everything.’_

There was an audible grin in its words. Orin mulled it over for a little too long. It grew impatient.

‘Feed me.’

Orin huffed. ‘There’s nothing here.’

‘Feed me.’

‘You - you don’t mean _me?_ H- hah- no, pal, that’s not-’

_‘Feed me.’_

‘H- how am I supposed to _get_ it?!’

His almost-sob of a plea was answered by the plant plucking a sizeable shard of Seymour’s broken glasses – half a lens! – before placing it in Orin’s outstretched palm.

Orin stared at it. Pleading, he looked up at the plant. He’d never felt so terrified. If it meant keeping the plant satisfied, if it meant keeping the police away – but then how many more patients would go missing? How much more blood would he have to spill?

He was stuck between a cell and a green place.

‘I can’t,’ he whispered. ‘No more. No more.’

‘Come on, Doctor,’ the plant cooed, a vine coiling around his wrist and guiding it over the pulsing purple artery of his other arm. ‘I thought you liked causing things _pain_.’

Sucking in a breath, Orin took a step back and began to cut.

\---

It took a lot of convincing to get the police there at this hour, but Seymour managed. With the help of Mr Mushnik, who, too, had been worried sick over Audrey’s disappearance but chose not to make this apparent, Seymour led two armed and sceptical policemen down to the basement of Orin’s apartment building.

It took the effort of all four men to break the door down. It’d stuck when Seymour had slammed it. Tumbling into the room, they were met with a grisly sight and an overwhelming stench. The basement stank like an abattoir.

Orin lay pale-faced against the furthest corner. His eyelids still fluttered. His left arm had been opened. The wiry, stringy flesh inside barely quivered with life, glistening under the lonely bulb’s glow. A shard of glass, opaque with gore, lay at his side. The wound gaped. It had been slit open from the wrist to the elbow, but the most fantastic part of the scene was the doctor’s face: serene and ecstatic, the face of a man who’d died laughing; died in victory.

His right arm had been cut open, too.

The plant drooped, vines creeping close to his dying body but not quite reaching it.

Blood pooled around Orin’s body, staining every part of him, but the plant; the plant was dry.


End file.
